Welcome to Inadvertent Consequences
Random thoughts on travel, being an author, food, and other things
We got hammered yesterday with seven, or so, inches of snow. The sad thing is that it was only like two weeks ago that the temperatures were in the seventies. I hate winter at the best of times, and having it show up early this year doesn’t please me.
That being said, the new husky puppy had a blast. It was all new and exciting for Ronin and I’m sure he will continue to love it…sigh Here are a couple of vid’s of him playing in the white stuff…
I got the critiques for my short story submission to the PNWA contest for this year and over all they were pretty good. Still no winners check, though. I wish they would tell you what place your story took- 4th, 5th…whatever, but they don’t, so you just don’t know how close you came, other than that you were a finalist.
Particularly amusing were that both people who read/critiqued my entry said the same thing…the story was very good, but would have been better with more fleshing out. Here’s the thing, the contest restricts you to 3000 words maximum, so it doesn’t leave much room for that.
To be honest, I already knew that, In fact, after last years honorable mention I took the short and added another 4000 words to it before sending it to the WOTF contest where it also got an honorable mention. I’ll most likely do the same for this one.
As encouraging as being a finalist is, or earning Honorable mentions, it would be nice, just once mind you, to win. Ah well, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.
So…I sent the revised copy of my manuscript for Dire Consequences back to the editor yesterday, where it will get another pass for changes/fixes. It took longer than I had originally hoped because I lost a whole week due to being OnCall at work. Still, it was a relief to get it done.
What’s next? Quite a bit actually. I need to get an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) number for each version of the book I want to offer (Ebook, paperback, hard-cover, etc…), develop the synopsis/blurb for the back cover (I’ve heard this is harder than actually writing the book), the front matter: copyright paragraph, acknowledgments and dedication, page formatting and cover artists, and finalizing on a cover (eventually).
And this doesn’t even count any additional re-writes I may need to do. It’s a bit overwhelming to tell the truth, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (unless that light is an oncoming train…lol). I’ll keep you up to date as the process advances, and I keep telling myself that it should make the journey for the two sequels go smoother…we’ll see.
Eddie Van Halen passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He is not the first celebrity to die this year, nor will he be the last…but it is a death that impacts millions of people to varying degrees.
I never knew the man. The closest I came to meeting him was seeing him in the hallway at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Spokane. The band was here to play a show, and I was at the hotel because of a Prom…or more honestly, the parties going on in various rooms. I didn’t really give it much thought other than to think it was kind of cool to see someone like that.
It wasn’t until years later that I would get to see the band live, and not even the original line-up. Van Hagar played at The Monsters of Rock show that we had gathered enough signatures to force them to appear here (that’s a whole different story). I was never a fan of Van Hagar, and to tell the truth I didn’t love any album after the first, it went way too mainstream for my tastes.
But that first album blew my damn mind when it came out in 1978. I was fifteen years old and had never heard anything quite like it. In fact, the only song I hated was Ice Cream Man, it always felt like a filler song to me.
I was in a local record store perusing what I was going to spend my hard-earned money on, when my ears were assaulted by the sounds of Eruption playing over the store sound-system. I rushed to the front and demanded to know who it was. Name of the band in hand I immediately made a bee-line to the “V” section and snagged a copy (I also picked up Boston’s first album which created a lifelong fan of their music too).
These were the first two records I had ever purchased. Only days before had I finally put down enough money to by a turn-table, speakers, and a headset, and I was eager to put it to use. In retrospect all of this was worth every penny, and I would do it all over again.
I have a fairly eclectic taste in music, although I almost always gravitate to rock/metal in spite of forays into Punk, Industrial, and other genres. It was all due to the influence that Eddie imparted to this impressionable teenager with his bands freshman effort. No one else played the guitar quite like he did, nor produced the sounds that flowed from it.
The world has lost a true icon.
